Charlie O'Connor: Dandyisms

Limp musical comedy and flat jokes at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Charlie O’Connor is a guy who looks like a girl and is often mistaken as such. This leads to awkward moments with bigoted cabbies and confused women in supermarkets, and we seem to be off to a decent start. Even if he hadn’t told us, it becomes patently obvious that O’Connor has been on a clowning course and he moves, gesticulates and pulls strained faces as though possessed by the worst kind of clowny spirit. Then, for reasons which are entirely unclear, he shows us how to dance like a sexy girl. Maybe he learned how to do this at clowning school.

After some limp musical numbers and routines which go nowhere, O’Connor closes with a section inspired by Operation Yewtree in which he attempts to show that even the most seemingly innocent of songs (in this case, Abba’s ‘Does Your Mother Know’) might hold sinister pervy overtones.

Having dragged a girl up on stage, he mimes his way through the song switching visually between a courteous suitor and creepy sleazebag. The mime is largely faultless because, well, he attended a course in which he trained to be a clown. Maybe next year he’ll return having gone on a course which teaches people how to be a stand-up comedian.